


Last Letter

by kiwipixel77



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, One Shot, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiwipixel77/pseuds/kiwipixel77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia reads a letter from the Dragonborn after he leaves to defeat Alduin. One-Shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hello everyone! So this is a one-shot that popped into my mind the other night, and it wouldn't leave me alone. 
> 
> Is it just me, or were you all disappointed in the ending to Skyrim? I mean, it was alright, I guess, but I think it would have been more epic if your character died fighting Alduin. I don't know, maybe that's just the sadist in me (not the sexual kind, weirdo). It would have been a fitting end to the Dragonborn's story.
> 
> So in this piece I decided that the Dragonborn knew he would die in the last fight, and he wrote a letter to his Housecarl Lydia. Cue sadness.
> 
> And on another note for my other readers, I have not abandoned my story "The Thing You Fear The Most". I have encountered writer's block/I am waaaaay too busy with uni. I will update soon. Maybe. Probably not. But don't lose hope!
> 
> Anyways, read on! Hope you enjoy it, and please review with any thoughts/criticism/whatever!

It was late afternoon by the time Lydia returned to Breezehome, weary and shaking, but not from travel or the cold. She grabbed hold of the door handle and paused for a moment, before taking a deep breath, filling her lungs with the crisp fall air, and pushing it lightly open. The bright midday sun spilled into the small main room, falling across the worn stone floor and lighting up the bookshelves, the chairs, the tables, and all of the Dragonborn’s personal items distributed throughout. She stood in the doorway and looked around solemnly.

It was strange, she thought. She’d lived here for years, and this house had always been home to her. A refuge, a place to unwind and relax and forget, if even for a little while, the troubles of the world. This place had been witness to laughter and song and some of the best times she’d ever had. But now it seemed cold and uninviting. Hollow, even. As if all the life had been sapped out. There was a dying fire in the hearth, but she couldn’t feel its warmth.

She stood there until the people of Whiterun began to give her curious looks. When she noticed the first of them she was quick to close the door and shut out the unforgiving world. She wanted to be alone.

Funny, she mused, as she shuffled ever so slowly into the house. She was not a very sociable person and had always considered herself a loner. Her Thane had been the same. But like with everything else he’d ever done, he’d changed her, and she found herself of late making friends and talking with people who she had never given a second glance, even though she’d lived here her whole life. But she neither wanted nor needed other people right now.

There was only one person she wanted to see. And he was gone.

She moved into the room stiffly, almost on autopilot, as her mind swirled and raged with these thoughts and more. She didn’t even notice herself drop her weapons on the floor with a dull thud, or sit down heavily on the table in the tiny kitchen. She didn’t know how long she sat there, unmoving, unyielding, nor did she notice when the fire died and it became so cold she could see her breath.

But she remembered her anger rising inside her, slowly at first, coursing through her veins, until it was boiling and she finally reached her breaking point. With a guttural cry she pushed herself up from the table and kicked her chair back with such force it broke a leg as it hit the opposite wall. She took a jug from the table and, after a moments glance, threw it at the wall. It shattered into a million little pieces and she felt a small pang of satisfaction.

She grabbed another jug and threw it, and then a bowl, and when there was no more breakable pottery in the kitchen, she stormed into the living room and kicked over the stewing pot over the hearth. The remnants of their previous day’s supper spilled out onto the stone and kicked up cold ashes from the firepit.

Lydia felt great. No, more than great. She felt elated. Euphoric. Such raw, uncivilised violence was what she needed. And she took it.

Like the worst of Skyrim’s winter storms, she tore through the house with unrestrained ferocity. In her wrath she kicked over every piece of movable furniture and laughed when their contents clanged to the ground. She ripped open drawers and threw the clothing and whatever else was inside with a growing force. It was even better when she found something breakable, because that meant she could destroy it. She grabbed all the food in the house and crushed it all beneath her armoured boot, one at a time. She took every single book in the house and piled them up on the firepit. Ripping out their pages had quickly lost her interest. It didn’t take her long before she hastily made a roaring fire in the hearth and watched in satisfaction as the pages of the books curled and turned black in the heat.

 _It’s not big enough,_ her feral mind concluded, and she proceeded to take down all of the weapons on the racks and use them to savagely chop some of the wooden furniture into pieces. Splinters flew and she hacked with such force she broke the calluses on her battle-hardened hands. When she was done she tossed the wood onto the fire and wiped her bleeding palms on her cuirass and it grew so high that it became stifling in the house. _I can fix that._ She took the axe she used and walked from one window to the next, smashing out the glass with a vicious smile. That did the trick, though. The heat was sucked out and fresh air blew in.

The savage Housecarl stood there in the centre of her violence, breathing deeply of the cool air wafting inside. As much vindication as her episode had given her, it didn’t satisfy her enough. And as the monster inside her faded away, she realised this. She slumped against the wall and slid to the ground, and she finally let go.  

Time became obsolete again, and the warrior sat there in her agony with her head in her hands until the fire became respectable in size. She worked hard to think of nothing, and she eventually managed that. It was easier not to think because that meant she couldn’t feel. And when her mind became dull and blank at last, she glanced up and looked around at her destruction. She felt no shame or pride. She felt nothing.

Through her red and teary eyes she managed to spot a piece of yellowing paper folded in half. It was just laying there on the floor under some shattered glass and an old shirt, and it was a miracle it had escaped her rage undamaged. It should have been burned with the books.

It wasn’t far from her foot, so she unconsciously leaned over and picked it up. She mechanically unfolded it and stared blankly at the writing.

Something deep inside her stirred. Her cold heart gave a tiny skip as she recognised her Thane’s messy handwriting. But her anger crept back up almost immediately, and with furrowed eyes she automatically crushed it in her hand and tossed it aside, blood from her ruined hands staining it. She cursed the man for destroying her state of being that she worked so hard to achieve. And she spent the next little while trying to build the walls back up. She never noticed as the sunlight died.

But that piece of paper was right there beside her, and it was chipping away at her mental defence. It would not leave her alone, and she found herself glancing over to it more and more. She managed to convince herself that her walls would forever be weak with the hole the paper created. The only way she could patch the hole and be strong was to get it out of the way. So with reluctance she leaned over again and snatched the paper from the ground, irritated. The sooner she read it, the sooner she could forget it.

She unfolded the crumpled paper and smoothed it across her armoured knee. Taking a deep breath, one that seemed to last a lifetime, she started reading.

_Lydia,_

_You know I’m no good at writing, and I’m not really sure why I wrote this, to be exact. I guess it’s something for you to keep and remember when the memories start fading and the years roll by, as you and I both know they do._

Ugh. She regretted reading it already.

_Where to begin? You know how indecisive I am, too. So forgive me if I ramble. I’m no poet, as you well know._

_As I write this, I’m sitting right in front of you now, and you’re making stew over the fire like you’ve done for so many years. You’re talking about asking Adrianne to patch up my armour, and how you broke up a fight in the market last week, and of course you are chastising me for not letting you know where I was the past few months. And you’re probably wondering why I don’t just talk to you. After all, it is my first night back after my long absence. I know you’re curious about my journeys, but the stories are long, and I am getting tired, and I have a big day tomorrow. And I know you won’t force me to tell you, because even after all we’ve been through, you still sometimes treat me as your Thane rather than your friend._

So this was written last night. The memories still existed, but they seemed so distant, as if they were merely pictures from a child’s storybook from another lifetime.

_But I will tell you, Lydia. It is the least I can do. And I did tell you, if all went according to plan. And now you know. You know how I scoured all of Skyrim searching for the Elder Scroll. You know how I delved deep beneath the soil of Nirn to retrieve it. And how I climbed the Throat of the World and used it to sail  across time and space to learn the Dragonrend shout from our ancient heroes- the one chance I have at defeating Alduin once and for all._

Yes, she did know. He had told her all about his recent adventures this morning – which also seemed like a lifetime ago – at –

No. She couldn’t even say the name. It would certainly break her wall if she heard of that place again.

She continued reading.

_But I guess the main reason I write this is because I don’t want to mess this up. I’m afraid if we just talk, I’ll miss something and beat myself up on my way to wherever it is that dragon we catch leads me. As I already said, I’ve never been good with words. Not the sentimental kind, anyhow. You’re probably laughing at me right now. I know you can’t shut me up normally, and you know I could probably convince King Ulfric himself to abdicate and hand me the sceptre. But with things like this, I just can’t seem to do it. Not in person, anyhow._

Yes. That stupid man could do anything he set his mind to. But why, _why_ hadn’t he come to her sooner? She felt the anger bubbling up again, but she pushed it aside.

_By the way, you just handed me a bowl of stew, and I must comment on your spectacular cooking skills. You get better with each passing day._

_But enough rambling. See? I told you I would ramble._

Lydia heard a tiny squeak and jumped in surprise. She was shocked when she realised it was a small laugh, and she looked around the room for the culprit. She was floored when she realised it had come from her.

Even when he wasn’t here, her Thane could make her laugh.

_So here we are - at the end of our long journey. Yes, Lydia, this is a farewell letter if you didn’t already know. I leave for Dragonsreach tomorrow morn, and I think you know as well as I that this will be my last journey. One last great adventure, as we used to say._

There it was. Dragonsreach. The last place she had seen her Thane.

She knew. She always knew. She knew from the moment that man had burst through the doors last night, cold and hungry and tired, that there was something off. A change, so subtle that neither of them spoke of it. And he knew it, too.

There was no coming back.

Her walls were crumbling down, but she tried so hard to hold them up.

_I never really believed in destiny, not before coming to Skyrim, but these last years have made me a believer. It was my destiny to be captured that day on the border. I was not supposed to die then. I met Alduin that day, my bane and my saviour, and I survived when most others perished in his flames. I came then to Whiterun – my first and truest home. And not long after I met you._

_I know you didn’t like me when we first met. You were disappointed in being assigned Housecarl to a scrawny Imperial. You thought Balgruuf was insane for letting the ‘enemy’ have a place in court, however small that place was. And I know it irritated you when I dragged you across Skyrim filling your packs with useless junk to sell to merchants or the odd Khajiit caravan. But with each abandoned cave and Draugr-filled tomb, we became closer. Close enough that I considered you my friend._

Through her watery eyes she laughed again. Yes, she remembered the long hot days of trudging and fighting, and the cold nights filled with hunger and silence. But what she remembered most was the first time he walked through the doors of the Jarl’s Keep. She _had_ been disappointed and irritated with him. He was distant and scared and so fragile and wiry she laughed at him secretly, knowing he could never defend himself properly.

But Imperials are made differently than Nords. They are smaller and thinner. Her Thane could handle himself quite well, much to her surprise. And as time wore on, he proved to her his proficiency. And, different though they were, they were much the same, and they grew to be friends.

_And as the years rolled by and I stayed at Breezehome less and less, our friendship did not wane, but grew even stronger. Lydia, you were my first and truest friend, and I thank you for always being there._

Yes. She missed those first years with him, but as he grew stronger and well-known, he left her here more frequently. But that only meant their time together was better spent. She smiled at the painful memories.

_I was to become Thane of all nine holds, the Harbinger of the Companions, the Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild, the Arch-Mage of the College, Stormblade of the Stormcloaks, and hero to all those who call this frozen wasteland home. I would be named Champion to a dozen Daedra.  I would crown a king and kill a ruler. I would walk the planes of Oblivion, delve the deepest caverns, and climb nearly to the sky. I would save the sun from a madman, and the Last Dragonborn would meet the First. It seemed as though destiny had great plans for me. The admiration of strangers and friends, freedom from the mundane, all the money and women and property and power in the world. What could anyone else ask for?_

_But I became angry, and cold, and I know you saw a change in me. I did not want the titles or the fame. I never did. I never wished to fight for this land that accused me of betrayal and deceit and scorned me wherever I roamed all because of where I was born and the colour of my skin._

Her smiled faded as she read this. She was once guilty of prejudice, and she remembered wherever they went, her thane had been ridiculed. People rejected him as the Hero of Skyrim. _“How can he be Dragonborn? He’s not even a Nord!” “He must be a spy for the Empire. Don’t trust him!” “Watch yourself, Imperial!”_   He was denied help and turned away many times. He was degraded and hated for the crime of being alive.

And she _did_ notice a change in him. He lost his easy-going tone and adopted a new stark one. His lithe gait was replaced with a marched determinedness. His once-bright eyes grew dark and cold. He stopped his jokes and his laughter became rare. And one day he left her without a word.   

_I never told you this, but I went through some dark times, and I found the family I never had in the Brotherhood. And I was happy, I guess, for a while at least, taking out my anger on those whose time had come. I grew bitter and angry at destiny, and I wished for nothing more than to escape her grasp and forget what I was born to do. And I did in my time with the Brotherhood. But after even those whom I trusted most betrayed me for power and freedom, I fled and I knew then that destiny was a cruel agent. Twice betrayed to the Oculatus. I had nothing left in the world but material wealth, and I know better than anyone how little it is truly worth._

She was utterly shocked to her core. _The Dark Brotherhood?_ Her thane had been an _assassin?_ He had never told her this. True, she would have been furious with him and would probably have beaten his ass. But she would forgive him. She always did.

Why hadn’t he told her about them?

She continued reading, shaking her head in disbelief.

_So I wandered the wilds for a time, in anger and in doubt, and whether by chance or will I found myself climbing the Seven Thousand Steps once more. And I talked with Paarthurnax, and he said something to me on that cold winters day. He asked me, “What is better – to be born good, or overcome your evil nature through great effort?”_

_You see, I am not a good man nor a merciful man. If anyone ever told you otherwise, they were lying. Killers and thieves don't make good heroes, and that's all I saw myself as after Bravil._

Bravil. A chill ran up her spine at the mention of that squalid town in Cyrodiil. Her friend had told her about what happened there once. Only once, and very little. And she knew it pained him to recall it.

All she knew about her friend’s past was that he had been an orphan living on the streets in the Imperial City, never having met his parents. It was hard, he said, and he barely scraped by. But when he was older, he and his best friend, a fellow orphan by the name of Silas, grew tired of their misfortune and gathered what little belongings they had, taking a group of other street kids south into the wilds. They lived there, earning their keep as mercenaries and performing odd jobs as they travelled from town to town. And they grew up together, and they made a living for themselves. They managed to turn their lives around against all odds.

But something dark grew between Silas and her thane. He never told her what, except that one day something happened and Silas stormed off. A little while later he returned, apparently over his whatever had seized him. But her friend knew something was wrong, and he was proven right.

And the Penitus Oculatus ambushed them one night in the town of Bravil. Silas, in his growing anger and fear, had gone to them, and was promised wealth if he could reveal the location of any conspirators of the Emperor. So he lied and told them his friend, his brother-in-arms, was plotting, along with the rest of their band, an attempt on the ruler’s life.

Her thane managed to escape with his life, but not after taking his friend’s at the edge of a sword.

_What happened with Silas changed me. It burned away any belief I ever had in the goodness of men or in the triumph of light over dark. Most men, good men like Silas, do not act because they think they are wrong. Men can justify anything and do the worst wrongs in the name of what they believe right, even betraying everything they fought for. As I watched the one whom I called brother take no care of my fate and betray me to the Oculatus, I saw then the willingness of weaker men to blindly follow orders of those they admired and feared, even when they were wrong. I saw the weakness in humanity that day, and the resolve of those who had  power._

_I determined then not be one of them. I ran from that place, and I never looked back. The next job, the next few coins. Don't ask questions, and leave judgment to the gods. I cannot tell you how many I've left dead in my wake since then, nor do I care to know their names or faces._

_I am not a force of good or evil, no matter what the stories say, and I have never had any interest in changing the world, of championing any cause. I am simply a man drawn into the maelstrom. Destiny had no place in my world._

_But what Paarthurnax said to me that day changed me. For the better, this time. I realised that no man is born good. No, not even the prophesised Dragonborn, the Hero of Skyrim._

_We are all brought into this world with evil in our hearts. It is not our fault, but simply the way the gods made us. You can run your whole life from the evils of the world, but you will never escape them, as they live inside you. They grow and fester if you choose to feed them._

_And it was then I realised. Destiny had put me upon the path to Helgen, but it was me who chose to go there. I chose to follow Ralof out of that place, and it was my decision to go to Whiterun._

_You see, destiny is real and alive in this world. She creates heroes and shapes the future. She prophesises the coming of one to defeat the World-Eater. But destiny is not a matter of chance, like I believed. It is a matter of choice. It is not there to be waited upon. It is to be achieved. Do you think I would be where I am today if I chose to cower behind a wall from that dragon? If I chose to stay at Breezehome for the rest of my days? If I never walked the length of Skyrim times untold?_

_It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves. And our mistakes make us who we are._

_I no longer hold any anger towards Silas. He did what he thought was right._

_And though there is evil in us all, we can choose to face it and overcome it. There is some good in this world, Lydia. There are good people out there. They are not tyrants or leaders or kings. They are the small folk. The owners of inns who let me stay a free night simply because I had no coin and looked weary. The mothers who chase their children through the streets. The fathers who work long hard hours just so their family can eat another day. The hunters in the wilds who saved me from certain death, even though I was not of their kind. They are the people of Skyrim. They are forgotten, mostly, but I chose then to embrace where destiny had led me and save their home for them._

_And so with great effort I set out to become the hero I wanted to be._

_And the rest is history._

Lydia’s heart ached as she read. She never heard her friend talk like this before. He had always seemed so strong to her. If not in body, then in mind. Her tears began to spill over the brim of her eyes, and she had to blink so she could see clearly.

_Do not think I had a bad life, Lydia. I did not. It was rough at times, but who doesn’t endure sorrow and pain and the sting of betrayal? No, my life was good. I saw more of Tamriel that most only ever dream about. I met good people, and I talked with dragons and walked with gods. I saw evil as well as good. I made friends and formed families and gave Skyrim back her freedom. What a ride it’s been!_

_I want to thank you for the things you’ve taught me. I want you to know that as my world unravelled and my skies crumbled, you were there to pick me up. I am not the strong warrior that the legends speak of. I needed your help more than you’ll ever know._

_I own myself today, because of you. I suppose a part of me will always love you. That’s what’s most amazing about love, isn’t it? There’s no getting it back once you give it away. Lydia, thank you for being a part of my life, for being my friend, even for just the moments we shared._

_The Greybeards once told me that_ _in the face of adversity, you learn who your true friends are. My time here has been full of challenges and hardships and betrayals, but I am so very lucky to have had true friends like you to face them with me._

_I am so deeply grateful to you for all you have done for me. I wish the outcome had been different but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it all over again._

The warrior was freely crying now.

_Thank you for the meals and the jokes and for saving my life more times than I can count. Thank you for being someone I could trust with my darkest secrets, and someone I could be myself around. Thanks for your advice and your wisdom._ _Thank you also for all the late night talks we had. There was always something about the way you listened that made me feel like the only person in the world, and I knew then that you learned to truly care for me._

_I was unfortunate enough to know the bitter taste of betrayal and my experience in Bravil tainted my view of men and their potentials. I was wary and mistrustful of others, and I searched and sought for years for an answer. Then you came into my life and showed me that it is ok to have a friend. And I realised that’s all I ever really wanted._

_And tomorrow when I depart from Breezehome for the last time, I want you to know that I am sorry I caused you pain in the past. I’m sorry for involving you in my troubles, and I’m sorry I did some things I know you’re not proud of. But I’m not sorry for ever having met you. I hope you always remember that._

_I’m sorry as well for not telling you this in person. But I need you to read this and remember why I did the things I did. I know you will be angry with me for leaving you without a proper goodbye, but I think this is the way it has to be. When the years come and go, and you find someone and fall in love and have a big family like I know you’ll do, you’ll read this again and smile and remember me and the crazy adventures we had. Time is a cruel agent as well, and he’ll try his hardest to erase what was._

_I have kept you close to my heart and hope you will do the same. Promise me you’ll forgive yourself for letting me go._ _Forgiveness is something everybody deserves because one day it may be too late._

Lydia could barely read. She was heaving deep, heavy sobs.

_As one last request, I ask of you, Housecarl, to deliver messages to all my associated factions throughout Skyrim notifying them of my departure. Tell Brynjolf to choose another Guildmaster. He’s got a real talent for picking them. Let Aela and the twins fight it out amongst themselves who will be next Harbinger. Please notify all the Jarls of my retirement. Inform Tolfdir of his new position as Arch-Mage. Tell Ulfric to never stop fighting for his country. I’ve worked too hard for him to let it go to waste. And please send someone up to the Greybeards, thanking them for all their help. I know you don’t want anything to do with the Dark Brotherhood, but can you send them a message? Tell them I forgive them, and they will forever be part of my family._

_And now I ask of you, my friend, to move on with your life. Do not weep for me. Life is too short and wondrous for such frivolities. Let your thoughts be ever with the living. You have your whole life ahead of you yet. This is but the closing of one chapter, and I am so thankful I have played a part in it. My story is nearing its close, now, and I want you to see that when it is over, when I am gone and you remain, know that I needed you, loved you, cared for you always._

_I regret a lot of things I’ve done, but most of all that I never got the chance to tell you that, no matter what happens next, wherever my last adventure takes me, I’ll never be anything but grateful for every moment I spent with you. And even though I’ve always fumbled for the right words, all I really wanted to say was thank you. Thank you, Lydia._

_Look after yourself, alright? I know we’ll see each other again some day. Until then, farewell, my friend. Sovngarde awaits._

_-DB_ __  
  


The woman sat there in the growing dark of the ruined house, alone, clutching the wrinkled paper stained with blood and tears.

She was so overcome by grief and her loss that she didn’t ever think she could pull herself up off the floor. And she didn’t for a long while.

Because how could she possibly continue living when the man she loved was gone forever?

Yes, Lydia had loved him. She had fallen for him. For his eyes, and his smile, and his easy way of life. For his hardships and forgiveness. For every long night beneath the stars, and every laugh they shared together. But he was dead now, and she would never get the chance to tell him.

But then the sun peeked through the window, and she heard people outside. And somewhere out there, the leaves fell from a tree, and a wolf killed a deer, and an orphaned boy arose from sleep. The world went on. And so did she.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Hello again everybody! Wow, it has been so long since I looked at this story! I love the first chapter so much, and a lot of people do too - so thank you to everyone who reviewed, faved, and followed it over the years! This second chapter just sort of came to me as I reread Last Letter the other day. I figured that maybe Lydia's story needs to be told, and it needs to have a happy ending. Which it does. Sort of.**

**This is exceptionally angsty but if you liked the first chapter, I think you'll like this as well.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

It is the last day of Lydia's life.

And everything _hurts._

There's blood in her mouth and she can taste it, warm and coppery, and it's on her hands pressed against the wound to her chest, and it's there deep inside, filling her lungs and throat and making it difficult to breathe. It's hard to see, too, and her eyes are watery and fuzzy and everything is shifting in and out of focus, a warm blur of shapes and colours through a whitish haze.

 _"Mother!"_ the woman above her cries, and her face comes into focus against a brilliant blue sky. She's beautiful, even if her face is twisted in fear. She has the same colour of eyes as Lydia.

Lydia tries to tell her this, yet nothing comes out but blood. It spills from her lips and she knows it's staining her teeth red, and it will be a pain to get out of her armour later on. It rolls down her cheek and she can feel it near her ear. She must be laying down.

She moves her fingers and feels the soft blades of grass beneath her fingertips. And she feels the rocks, too. Skyrim is so very rocky. It always was.

She spits blood. She swallows blood. There's too much blood. It's everywhere, pooling around her, and she can feel it beneath the steel chest plate, hot and sticky and slippery, and she knows its staining the grass too.

Lydia feels the strength leaving her body, ebbing away slowly and evenly like the low tide. Like the waning twin moons, like the sun going down. A warm numbness spreads from within her, a soft weight on her chest, and her head feels fuzzy, as if it were stuffed with cotton.

 _"Mother!"_ the woman cries again, and she's wiping the blood from Lydia's mouth, and she's crying now. She shouldn't. She's much too beautiful. _"Mother! Stay with me!"_

And she wants to. She really does. But Lydia is so very tired.

The sounds of the world around her become distant, thick and pasty and blurred, as if she was submerged under water. She can't hear the woman crying. Her lips are moving, but she can't hear anything.

She swallows, and can no longer taste her own blood. She can't even feel herself bleeding any more.

Despite all this, her heart thrashes wildly against her ribs like a bird in a cage, as if it knows it has little time left yet is determined to fulfil a lifetime's beats before the end.

_This is the end._

She knows this, and she has thought this many times before, and yet this time is different. She has never been more sure of anything in her life. It is as if her every moment on Nirn has led up to this instant – and it has, really – and suddenly everything makes sense. Yet she is not afraid. If anything, she is relieved. She can let the pain go. It would be easy now. Dying would be easy, and also this thought comes to her – living is much harder than this.

Only those terribly afraid of dying are the ones who haven't really lived. And Lydia had _really_ lived.

Before she dies, Lydia has a fleeting thought that she's going to be late for dinner. What will her husband eat? The man can barely boil water without burning himself.

She chuckles a little. Because it's funny, and she knows it doesn't really matter. She won't be there to make him dinner ever again.

The last thing she ever sees is the beautiful woman above her, framed against a sapphire sky and emerald pine trees, with the pale yellow haze of the sun illuminating all.

* * *

 

_Lydia is four years old, chubby-cheeked and tottering and clutching a toy by the doorframe. Her father is sitting in a chair by the hearthside before her, head in hands, and he is crying. Börje is there beside her, and he understands – her brother is older than her by a few years, and he's crying too. This is one of the first memories Lydia can recall, and even though it was always tinged in sadness, she treasures it fondly because it is the only thing she can remember while her mother was still alive._

_Lydia is six years old when she learns a hard lesson. Her father sits her down at the table and tells her why she can't play with the Khajiit girl camped outside the city, even though she is pretty and can braid hair really well and knows all sorts of neat songs and games from faraway places. And Bo never wants to play with dolls. He only likes wooden swords and climbing trees. Because she's a Khajiit, is all her father says, and when Lydia asks why that should matter, he says it's the only thing that matters._

"Do they haunt you?" she whispered after a long moment, breath forming in the snowy air. "The men you've killed?"

"Sometimes," he admitted. "I've killed a lot of people. Done a lot of bad things. You know that."

"They're not bad if they're necessary."

"Are they?" he asked, shadows of fear flickering in his eyes. "Does that make it any easier? Is it easier to kill a man when he's got a sword pointed at your heart and death in his eyes?"

"I don't know," she said. "I don't think so."

"They say it gets easier. I'm not sure that's a good thing."

_Lydia is nine years old, already tall and fast, and she's bawling because Börje's arm is twisted and hanging at an odd angle, and he looks more scared of their father than anything, because they were climbing the Gildergreen again and they both know they aren't allowed up the tree. So they lie and say Bo fell off a donkey wagon, because they love the tree so much, and all three of them know it's a lie but it's okay, because boys will be boys, and children should always climb trees._

_Lydia is ten years old and is sent home from school for punching Ásgeir in the nose, which is not fair because when he hit her brother last week he was never sent home. But it's because girls shouldn't hit – it's not ladylike – and neither is rubbing dirt in Ásgeir's face when he's on the ground. Even though her teacher won't say it, and Bo's ego is more than a little hurt – "I can take care of myself, you know," even though he's a little glad the boy leaves him alone now – her father is proud. He's going to teach her how to use a sword soon._

_Lydia is twelve years old when some of the boys at school chase her and tease her for being so unlike the other girls. She rides horses and plays with weapons instead of the other girls – who use their mean words instead of their fists – and she has no friends. Ásgeir is among them, and he throws a rock that leaves Lydia's eye bruised. She tries hard not to cry but Bo knows her better than anyone, and Lydia can't help but smile a little when those boys show up at school the next day sporting black eyes of their own._

He shifted where he was to get more comfortable, leaning back with his hands on the grass behind him, staring into the heavens. "This whole Dragonborn business, you know, it – it's a lot, sometimes, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It's tough. Sometimes it seems like too much. And sometimes I worry where it'll take me. This destiny, or prophesy, or whatever you want to call it. I won't lie, it _terrifies_ me. An Imperial as Skyrim's hero. A sneak-thief as a dragon slayer. Some god has a dark sense of humour, I tell you. I'm supposed to be some great hero and always do what's right. And everyone's supposed to look up to me. And I feel like I just constantly disappoint. Not even with the Imperial thing. With _everything."_

_Lydia is fourteen when she tells Bo she hates him through red and teary eyes. She can't even remember why they were fighting, but he stops yelling, too. "You don't really mean that," he says, and the sorrow in his face makes Lydia freeze. "We have to stick together, Lyds. We're all we got left." She hugs him, and she can't ever remember a time she's hugged someone harder and swifter than her brother._

_Lydia is fifteen years old when Bo leaves home to join the Stormcloaks. They are so proud of him, and Lydia knows when she waves him farewell on the back of a carriage that she will join them too when she is older. But she doesn't know she will never see him again. If she did, she might have said something a little better than "make sure you don't fall on your own sword, brother," as he ruffles her hair and smiles._

_Lydia is seventeen years old when the letter comes home. Her brother, now a respected Snow-Hammer in charge of a company of men, was ambushed by a band of Imperial soldiers at Weynon Pass during the night. No one survived. And Lydia is seventeen-and-a-half when her father first starts drinking._

Looking up, Lydia saw a million little stars glittering deep in the velvet of a night with no moon. She knew them all, their stories and their names. She knew them in a familiar way, the way she knew her own hands. The way she knew her friend.

"You know, I come out here sometimes by myself. At night, I mean."

"Yeah?" she said, still looking to the stars.

"Yeah. Keeps me sane, I guess. I do it when something's on my mind, or I need to think things over. There's just something about sitting alone in the dark that reminds you how big the world really is. How far apart we all are."

 _Lydia is nineteen years old when the new guard from Markarth arrives for his first shift in Whiterun. Lydia has her own company now, too, but it's mostly because it keeps her mind off her father and the stuff he says – "why haven't_ you _joined the Stormcloaks yet? Too afraid of dying?" – and does – if the bruises on her arms count for anything – when he's drinking. The guard's name is Einur and he is funny and sweet and handsome and he is Lydia's first everything, and she really believes he'll be her only. But he is transferred back to Markarth just shy of Lydia's twentieth birthday and she thinks it has something to do with her father. Lydia never sees Einur again. She doesn't know what became of him – and she often wonders if he's happy and if he's thinking of her too._

_It is nearly Lydia's twenty-first birthday when Ulfric kills the High King and plunges Skyrim into a bloody Civil War. It is also when she thinks about killing herself. It's only once – in the small hours of a cold winter dawn – but it's there and it terrifies her. More than her father's fist, more than the thought of what life could have been like with Einur. But Ulfric makes the Stormcloaks strong again, and soon he is captured. Her men need her. Whiterun needs her. The people of Skyrim need her. It gives her purpose, and she never thinks about it – death – again. She applies for the highest position on the Whiterun Guard: Housecarl to the Thane. She is accepted unanimously._

_And Lydia is twenty-one-and-a-half when she hears about the dragon attack in Helgen._

* * *

When she opens her eyes, Lydia sees a sapphire sky and emerald maple trees, with the pale yellow haze of the sun illuminating all.

And for just a moment, she could almost swear she is in Cyrodiil.

She's been to the country many times in her life. Her Thane had talked of the place – the rolling, grassy hills, the endless vineyards with their swelling purple grapes, the towering maples glittering their leaves in the sunlight – and had promised to take her to his homeland one day. But of course it had never happened. She'd gone on without him.

Her heart aches a little. She has not thought of her Thane in a very long time.

She sits up in the grass and takes a look around.

And it's all there – the hills, the vineyards, the trees – all of it. It is warm here, and a breeze she can feel on her skin is rustling the grass around her in pulsating waves. It all looks too real and yet too fake, as if she were in a dream, and everything is tinged in a sort of hazy glow. The colours are vibrant and real and _living,_ and it is exactly as she has always imaged where her Thane came from.

She is not bleeding. There is no blood in her mouth, on her chest, and her hair is not tangled and wild like it was. She checks to make sure. She pulls up the simple white clothing she is wearing, and the wound is not there. And not only that – all her scars are gone, every last one. All the battles she had fought in her life and had won, all the evils that tried steadfast to cut her time short, every narrow blade and dragon tooth and magic fire. Every monument to her struggle, every testament to where she had been and what she had done – all of it is gone, her skin smooth as the day she was born.

Her knee does not ache. She has all her fingers. For the first time she can recall, Lydia does not hurt.

She smiles. She can feel the warm sun on her skin, and she can smell the earth and the air. She runs her hand through the grass again, feeling how soft it is beneath her fingertips.

"It all feels pretty real, doesn't it?"

She looks up, and there is a man leaning against the trunk of a colossal red maple not far from her. He is handsome – tall with the olive skin, and the dark hair, and the sharp keen eyes that mark him as Imperial. How had she not noticed him, or the tree, until now?

She breaks off a few blades and fingers them, looking closer. "Are they not?"

The man smiles. "No. Not really."

"Not really?"

"I mean they can, if you want them to be. Where are we, by the way?"

Lydia gives him a strange look. "What?"

"This is _your_ heaven, after all. I'm just here for the ride."

Right. She is dead. How strange – _she is dead._ She is dead.

She looks around. Everything seems to go on forever, and yet it all feels so close she could simply reach out and touch it. She is in the exact centre of the universe and she is nowhere. "In Cyrodiil, I think."

"Cyrodiil? Really?"

"Yes."

"What part?"

"I don't know. I've never been to these parts before."

"Ah. A real shame, you know. It is a beautiful country. The countryside, at least. The cities have lost their magic over time, but the country – this is the place to be. I assume we are in the wilds?"

"We are."

He smiles again, and touches the tree he is leaning against. "I have not been here in such a long count of years."

"Who are you?"

"I believe you know who I am. I think you've thought of me much when you were alive, though we've never met."

And she knows. "Silas."

The man smiles, caressing the tree. "Silas. It's been even longer since I've heard that name."

Out of all the people she thought she'd meet when she died, he is the last one of them all.

"Why are you here?"

"Were you expecting someone else?"

 _"Anyone_ else."

Silas smirks. "You wound me, Lydia. If you must know, this is a waypost. A Crossroads of sorts. A stop on the path you are on to the place you are going. Think of it as a carriage ride, suspended between two places, neither here nor there. And I am the steward of your post."

"Where _am_ I going?"

"Where do you think?"

She frowns. "Sovngarde."

Silas chuckles. "You don't sound so happy, Lydia. I thought it was the greatest desire of the Nords to die and go to the Halls of their fathers. To feast among the great warriors of the past, and to fight even unto the ending of the world. Is this not what you desire?"

"It is. It _was."_ She takes a deep breath, and then looks him in the eye. "Imperials don't go to Sovngarde."

He smiles knowingly. "Ah. I see. You are afraid he will not be there."

"Yes." And she has been afraid of this truth all the days of her life. What was it the letter had said? _I know we'll see each other again some day._ But he had been wrong before.

"That is true. Sovngarde is the heaven of the Nords. Where the likes of _me_ go after the end, I have seen. It is not for you to know. But the Dragonborn was always stubborn. I don't think anything – not Alduin, not death, not even the doors of Shor's Hall could stop that man from getting what he wants. From finding you."

Lydia's heart leaps in her chest. "Is he there, then? In Sovngarde?"

"I can't say."

Lydia looks around her wildly. "Is he _here?"_

Silas walks over to her and sits beside her in the long grass, looking out at the fields below them.

"No. He's not."

"Where is he? Can you take me to him?"

"No. I can't."

She frowns – and her heart is a churning mess of everything she's been holding in since he left her all those years ago. "Why not?"

"He's somewhere I can't go."

"What is this, some sort of cruel joke? Where am I?"

"In Cyrodiil, I thought you said."

Lydia is growing angrier and angrier. "Is this even real? Is this just inside my head?"

"I can't tell you that."

"What _can_ you do then?"

"I can ask you a question. Do you think you led a good life?"

This gives Lydia pause. Not _had_ a good life, not _were given_ a good life – but _led._ As if it were all her choice.

He smiles again, seeing her conflict. "When I was alive, I learned something from it all – from everything that happened in Bravil. If I had known it then – well, I guess everything would be different. None of it would have happened. But sometimes the best and worse times of your life can coincide. It's a talent of the soul to discover the joy in pain – thinking of those moments you long for, and knowing you'll never have them again. The beautiful ghosts of our past haunt us, and yet we still can't decide if the pain they caused us outweighs the moments when they touched our soul. This, Lydia, is the irony of Love."

"Love?"

He gives her a knowing look.

Lydia looks down. "I have never really spoken of him since that day. It always hurt too much, but I guess it doesn't matter now. You know, every day I thought of what I could have said to him before he got on that dragon, before he left me – everything, and everyone. What I could have done. If I could have changed his mind, made him stay."

"If you told him you loved him?"

She sighs. "Yeah."

"That sounds a little like regret."

"A little, yes."

"Do you regret what you did that day?"

She thinks a moment. But she knows. And she thinks she's always known. "No. It was his Destiny."

Silas nods his head. "His Destiny was a lot bigger than mine. Bigger than yours. Bigger than all of ours. You never would have forgiven yourself if you stopped him."

_I never really did._

"I don't regret what I did, either," he says, gazing out at the shimmering grasses. "It had to happen. He never would have left Cyrodiil otherwise. You did great things in your life, Lydia, and for the same reasons _I_ had to die so _he_ could live out his Destiny, _he_ had to go so _you_ could live yours."

They are silent for a long time. Maybe it isn't a long time – Lydia is beginning to understand that time does not really matter any more. Maybe she's already been here for a hundred years. Maybe time simply does not exist.

"I blamed you, you know," she says. "I blamed you for his troubles, for the all pain you caused him. You hurt him, Silas, more than any blade ever could. But I thanked you endlessly for sending him to me."

He smirks, his face etched with memory and sorrow and the slow passage of time. "Well, then. For old time's sake, let's do it again."

He stands up, offering her his hand.

"What? I thought you couldn't take me to him."

"I can't. But I can send you there."

Lydia looks at his hand a moment, the hand that held the Dragonborn's hand in brotherhood and then in betrayal, and she thinks to herself _this is it._ After all these years, all those sleepless nights and weeping days, all of this _waiting_ – she will see him again.

She is ready.

She takes Silas's hand. He pulls her up.

"I did."

"You did?"

"Lead a good life."

He smiles one last time. "The very best."

And the world around her falls away.

* * *

_Lydia is twenty-five when she reads the letter._

_She is twenty-six before she smiles again._

_She is twenty-seven before the world starts to warm a little._

_And Lydia is twenty-eight years old when the Aldmeri Dominion declares war on the free states of Tamriel. Everyone is in a blind panic – there are lootings and murders and neighbour turns upon neighbour. Everyone is afraid of their own brother being an elven spy, and the streets are empty and cold. But this is not the world the Dragonborn died for, and so King Ulfric listens to her when she goes before all of Skyrim and implores he ally with the Empire. The new Emperor agrees, and the White-Gold Concordat is officially nullified, and the signing of the Blue Palace Accords occurs in Solitude with representatives from High Rock, Hammerfell, Morrowind, Black Marsh, and Cyrodiil. Universal liberties and laws are declared, and a united military with mutual rankings are established. For the first time in history, all of the world comes together against a common enemy._

_Lydia is twenty-nine years old when she first sees battle of the Second Great War. The elves are strong and smart with superior weapons and magic, but the Free Nations have numbers and valour and know their lands better than they do. It is bloody and horrifying and too many men die, and Lydia will never forget the smell of mud and blood, of warm rain mixed with the acrid tang of magic-fire, but, in the end, they win, sending the elves squealing back over the mountains. Lydia is awarded the title of Lieutenant and given her own platoon of men. Her men love her and respect her and she makes fast friends with them all. They are always eager to hear the stories she tells of her days with the Dragonborn, and though it hurts, she knows they need something to hold on to._

"Hey, Dragonborn…?" she asked nervously after a long moment.

"You know, you _could_ call me by my name," he chuckled, turning to her, and in his eyes she could see the reflection of a million little stars, bright and burning a millions miles away.

"I just – I just wanted you to know, no matter where your destiny lies, you will always be my friend. Remember that."

He smiled a wide smile, making Lydia's heart flutter madly.

"I am glad you're here with me."

_Lydia is thirty-two when her platoon is ambushed by an entire battalion of elves, and they are cornered in the steppes of North Kambria in High Rock for nearly two weeks. They are hiding in the boulders and crags and they are starving to death, but her men are strong and they won't leave their beloved Lieutenant. The carrier pigeon must have flown straight, for a company of Bretons led by Captain Gael Aldérad arrives from Wayrest and pushes the elves back down to the lowlands. Almost half of Lydia's platoon perishes in the battles and the rest are famished and thin, but they are indebted to Gael and his men. He offers to escort them back to the city, and along the way, Lydia speaks with him and finds he is loyal and smart and cares deeply for his men. He can't cook to save his life and nearly burns himself one night, and she teases him for it, and his jokes are terrible and she doesn't know why but they make her laugh anyway, and when they get to Wayrest, and they are on top of the old stone battlements of the great Breton city, he suggests that their units rest up and then travel to Black Marsh together, seeing as there is the annual convention of the Free Nations there anyway. She agrees. And she thinks she says yes just to see his smile again._

_It is on Lydia's thirty-third birthday when Elsweyr is liberated by the Free Nations and joins their cause. The Khajiit are grateful and free now, and they are given the same liberties as every other nation. This causes tensions to rise – Khajiit are sneaky and liars and thieves, after all – but they prove their worth a hundred times over. They are quick and clever and teach the other militaries the art of guerilla warfare and the secrets of their moonstone daggers, and together they manage to nearly push the elves entirely off the mainland of Tamriel. She is standing on a great shifting sand dune in Elsweyr watching her men mingle with the tearfully ecstatic Khajiit below when Gael walks up beside her. "We did it," he says. "They're free."_

_Lydia is thirty-three-and-a-half and drinking from her canteen after a skirmish in Morrowind when Gael grabs it from her hand and kisses her, and Lydia is speechless for only a moment before she kisses him back. "That took you long enough," she smiles when he pulls away, and he smirks – he is handsome even if he is a little short – and says, "Yeah, well, I have a tendency to be fashionably late." She smiles at his bad joke and they make love in his tent on the edge of camp, under the yawning, starry sky of the Morrowind wilderlands._

"You didn't leave Cyrodiil to see more of the world, did you?" She regretted the words almost immediately after they left her mouth.

It took him a long moment before he answered.

"No. I guess not."

"Why…?"

He sighed, and Lydia could see the flashes of hurt and memory and fear cutting him deep, tearing open his old wounds – scars and burns she couldn't even see.

_Lydia is thirty-four when she is promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and permitted to choose four companies of which she will control. There is no hesitation – she chooses Gael's company, and Captain Caius's Imperial company, and Captain Ataf's Redguard company, and another Nordic company under Major Storn – all great men with whom she fought beside and would trust with her life. Her own men willingly join Gael's men, and under her command they all manage to defend the ancient city of Torval, capital of Elsweyr, when the elves try to take it back from the Free Nations. It is a long, bloody battle, and for many years afterward the people of Elsweyr and beyond sing songs of their bravery. But it is here Lydia is wounded by the silver blade of an elf, tearing the muscles behind her knee. She rests in the stone towers of the Imperial City, and Gael visits her when he can. But she never quite recovers, and she begins to understand her time as a soldier is nearing its end._

_Lydia is thirty-five when King Ulfric calls her to Windhelm and asks her to accept her promotion to General of Skyrim's Armies. She is speechless – she can't lead all of Skyrim! – but Ulfric will have none of it. It is a more tactical position with a lot of paperwork and politics, but Lydia does it. And she enjoys it. And under her command, Skyrim gains a reputation of being fierce warriors, unwaveringly loyal to those they call friends. They moderate rising tensions between the Argonians and Khajiit, and offer the forests surrounding Riften to the refugees pouring in from Morrowind, and supply Hammerfell with the ore they need to forge their curved swords of war._

_Lydia is thirty-six when she hears news of Captain Caius's and Major Storn's defeat in Black Marsh. Both her dear friends perish in the fetid waters, and there are only forty-two survivors who make it out alive. It is a crushing blow to the Free Nations, and to Lydia and Gael and Ataf. It is a long while before Gael can get Lydia to forgive herself for sending them there. "I can't keep doing this," she tells him one autumn night in a rare baring of her soul. "I can't let any more of my friends die." He holds her as she refuses to cry – and fails. "Your men love you, Lydia. They will follow you to whatever end."_

_Lydia is not quite thirty-seven when the news arrives that the Emperor has been assassinated in his own palace. An elaborate elven infiltration that yields no culprits, no suspects, and leaves no trail. The Empire is in an uproar, and Imperial politics and trade come to a shuddering halt. There are desertions and murders and innocents thrown in jail, and the Free Nations nearly lose their Imperial allies. Lydia is exhausted beyond belief with the talks and conferences and riot controls, and she is losing weight and becoming ill and she although she is trying so hard not to show it, she is falling apart at the seams. Every failed raid, every lost lieutenant and every notice of decease from an old friend hurts her a little more, puts just that tiny little bit of weight on her shoulders. As Skyrim's General of Armies, she must be strong. She is. Skyrim asserts itself as the dominant nation in the Empire's absence and it leads and advises all other nations of the Blue Palace Accords._

"Do you regret killing it?"

He sighed. "No. I mean, maybe. It did try to kill us, though. It's not like I had a choice."

"No, you didn't. You had to. Don't feel bad."

He laughed wryly. "It's funny though, isn't it? I'm the Dragonborn. The prophesised dragon-slayer, Hero of Skyrim! And here I am crying over some stupid dragon." He sighed again. "I don't know."

"You don't have to. But it's not stupid if it means something to you."

She could see the flames of the fire flickering in his eyes. "I just… I'm a little worried, I guess. I know I have to kill them, but I don't really want to. They are beautiful creatures, Lydia. They are so intelligent. I know I'm just a man, but it – it _burns_ when I kill one. It's like a little part of me dies along with it."

_And when Lydia is in her thirty-seventh year, older and tireder and with the weight of the entire world on her shoulders, a familiar red dragon appears at the great Battle of the Breggs in the Imperial City, spouting wicked bursts of fire at the elves as they jump off the stone walls, screaming in terror and pain, and it is here that the greatest and hardest of battles was won, and the elves sail off to their homeland, battered and bruised but swearing they'll return one day. And thus the Second Great War was ended after ten long years of fighting. The Free Nations of Tamriel had won – month-long celebrations sweep the continent, fireworks dazzle the skies, and men of all races laugh and call each other brother. And she is in the heart of the Imperial City, sort of drunk on the marble balcony with Gael watching the magic explode in the sky, when he turns to her and she realises two things – one; the way he's standing now manages to catch all the explosive colours in his eyes, and two; she loves him._

_Lydia is thirty-eight and sending her soldiers, friends and companions of whom she'd fought with for a decade back to their homelands, when Gael bends on one knee and asks for her hand. She laughs – the man should have done this six years ago, because they aren't getting any younger – and everyone in the camp cheers for their General and Captain. They become Mr. and Mrs. Aldérad and move into a wonderful house at the top of the Hill in Wayrest, near where she met him all that time ago._

* * *

_Now,_ Lydia is certain, she is in Sovngarde.

The sky is unlike anything she has ever seen, or ever could have imagined. It is utterly unending, every colour seen by every eye in all of history swirling and glittering above her and around her and _through_ her. Sovngarde itself is made of the colours she sees, and it saturates the very ground she is standing on, the air she is breathing in.

It is like Silas and the Crossroads – it is both dreamlike and so very real. But unlike that place, with its endless landscape, she sees a landmark down below.

Something sleeping deep inside her, in the very blood of her being, awakens and starts _singing._ She can feel it, and it is as old as Time and as true as Death. Shor's Hall – the Hall of Valour, of her ancestors, the birthright of the Nords – towers over the Bone Bridge, over the desolate landscape around her. It is floating in the sky on an island of stone, and it is the grandest, most elaborate building Lydia has ever seen, even in all her long travels.

Like the twin moons to the earth, she is pulled toward it almost unconsciously, and then she is walking up the ancient stone steps – past the bones of long-dead dragons, and the twisted husks of burned trees, and then she sees him.

"What brings you, wayfarer bold, to wander here, in Sovngarde, souls-end, Shor's gift to honoured dead?"

Tsun is grim-faced and broad-chested and riddled with scars, and he stands in the space between her and her journey's end.

"I seek entrance to the Hall of Valour, brother. My life is done. My time is over. I would spend eternity in Shor's Halls."

He nods. "I welcome you, sister. I see all from the Windows of Sovngarde. I have seen your life and it has been good."

Lydia smiles. "The very best."

"But, living or dead, by decree of Shor, none may pass this perilous bridge 'til I judge them worthy by the Warrior's Test. Will you take this test?"

"I will."

And so she fights him – the sword appears in her hands as if it were always there. The battle is long and Tsun does not go easy on her. He hefts his great carved battle axe into the air, down over his head and it cuts into the ground, sending sprays of dirt around them. Over and over. She dodges him, and thrusts her sword, and it is cutting him, but the wounds close up almost as soon as they are formed.

She plunges the sword deep into his chest. He drops his axe and Lydia pulls her sword out of his unharmed body. He smiles.

"You fought well. I find you worthy. Enter the Hall of Valour, daughter of Skyrim, and be among friends and those you have loved."

When all your life is a battle, it seems the strangest thing to lay down your weapon. But she is done, now. Her battles are over. She glances down at the sword one last time – just a simple one, made of steel or iron maybe – and then she lets it go. It slips between her fingers and rings loud off the stone under her feet. She is done fighting.

Tsun steps aside and Lydia crosses the whalebone bridge.

And everyone is there.

Lydia's heart swells when she sees them – men and women she had only spared a passing glance, her fellow guardsmen in Whiterun, children she used to play with, old wartime friends, Ulfric, Ataf, Caius, Storn, Börje, and so many others – they are all here, and they greet Lydia with wide smiles and laughter and embraces, and she sees the faces, feels the hair, smells the skin of those she had lost so long ago. They are all exactly as she remembers them. Their faces are young, free of worry, free of pain, their bodies are free of the scars and the wounds that had hurt them in life. They are all free.

Her brother steps forward and claps her on the shoulder. "Well, Lydia," he laughs, and she cannot help but laugh along with him. "There is a tree here that look awfully like the Gildergreen back in Whiterun. I was thinking we could climb it again. The view from the top is wonderful. You can see the entire world from it."

Lydia wipes away the tears. She nods. "I'd love to, Bo."

"We can wait for your husband there. He won't be long, now. He's tired and misses you dearly."

Her heart aches at the thought of Gael. She has come all this way, and she is here now – and yet he is not.

"Bretons don't go to Sovngarde," she says.

"The brave and the good go to Sovngarde," Börje answers. "He had more than both. He will come."

Lydia nods, and she takes her brother's hand. "Take me to this tree."

"Alright. But there's someone I think you should see. He's been waiting a long time for you."

* * *

_Lydia is thirty-eight with a swollen belly atop the balcony of their hilltop house, and she is resting against the railing, the sun-sparkled white stone cool against her skin. Gael is beside her, and they are gazing out over the city that is her home now, at all the people and shops and streets she will know with time. High Rock is different than Skyrim in many ways – and in some it is hard to distinguish the two. But it is safer here than her homeland, less wild and perilous, and this is where Gael wishes to raise their family. "I'm Breton," he jokes with an alluring smile. "We can't live in Skyrim. I'll probably get stepped on." And she laughs even though it's a terrible joke, and she kisses him as he places a hand across her stomach. And she has faced vampires and dragons and elves in her time, yet the prospect of being a mother frightens her more than anything. What if she perishes like her own mother and the child must live without remembering her? What would Gael do without her? More than anything, she is terrified of raising a fist to the child and becoming something like her father. Gael knows this, and yet he never fails to remind her how much he loves her and how much stronger she is than that man. There are memories back home she does not wish to remember, old wounds that must be given time to heal. So Wayrest is her home._

_She is thirty-nine when Anise is born._

_She is forty when Sofie is born._

_She is forty-two when Jon is born._

_And Lydia is forty-seven when she begins to realise that age is catching up with her. She was much too old to have children when she did – little Jon is only five, and Lydia can barely bend down to pick him up any more. Her knee is giving her trouble lately, and the alchemist is doing everything she can, but the potions are just not working. She hates that she can't sit down on the ground to play without the pain shooting up her leg. She nearly falls off the horse more often than not, and when Anise asks for something on the top shelf, Lydia must wait for her husband to come home. Gael is a wonderful father, never afraid to bathe them and dress them and chase them around like a parent ought, and he does more than he should, really, but he isn't young anymore either, and his back is stiff in the mornings. "The price of freedom," he says one sunrise as they both ache even before they leave the bed. "But it is worth it, Lydia." And Lydia always agrees._

He held out his hand to her, smiling down at her from where she was sitting in the grass. "C'mon," he said with a smile to rival the sun. "What do you say we go find something to kill us? Go on one last great adventure?"

She smiled, taking his hand. "There's nothing more in all of Skyrim I'd rather do."

_Lydia is forty-nine when terrible storms blast the shores of Wayrest, and the grey rain pours down in sheets for near a month, making the streets muddy and everything damp. It is cold in their stone house, and Lydia is awoken one night to the pressure of a few small bodies on her bed. The wide eyes and pleading do not go unheeded, and it is a sleepy Gael that lets the children climb under the covers. All five of them – including the dog – are squashed together on the bed and no one really sleeps that night with all the giggling and poking and accidental crotch-kicking. Lydia laments that moments like this were stolen from her as a child, and yet she revels in the fact she can enjoy them along with her own children for the first time._

_Lydia is fifty-one when Anise comes home from school with a torn dress and dirt-smudged face. The boys at school were teasing her and throwing rocks, and Lydia wipes away her tears as she remembers her own youth. How foolish and insignificant it seems to her now, and yet at the time it was the end of her world. And she remembers Börje, her brother, and the troubles they caused in their childhood. How very different her life might be if he had lived. She misses him dearly and thinks of him every day, watching her own children grow. "Do not quarrel with your siblings," she tells them. "They are all you have." Anise is much like Lydia in some ways – she is more Nord than Breton, always climbing trees and using sticks as swords. And her eyes are the brilliant blue of her Nordic forebears, the exact shade as Lydia's. Sofie is more like her father than anyone else – she has a penchant for magic, and she makes terrible jokes and loves learning about the world, forever asking wide-eyed questions of all she sees around her. Little Jon is only nine but Gael is convinced he will be the greatest bard the world has ever seen. The boy can weave stories like a master tailor, and he is forever banging sticks off of metal pans. Lydia is more convinced he is a normal boy who lies and likes to hit things._

_Lydia is fifty-four when Captain Ataf visits them in Wayrest. The three old friends sit on the white stone balcony for a fortnight, and they eat and drink and remember the battles won and friends lost. He tells the children old Redguard tales of the desert and they show him around the city, and the frog-pond where they like to swim, and the old oak tree where Gael built them a fort high in the branches. He is hurting, too, suffering from an old arrow wound in the shoulder, leaving his smooth swarthy skin a mess of pinkish, swirling scar tissue. Before he leaves for home, they toast a tankard of ale to Caius and Storn, whose bodies were never found in the marshes of Argonia. "We will see them again," he says. He leaves with a wide smile and his booming laugh, and writes them every year until he dies peacefully in his sleep._

_Lydia is fifty-five when word arrives from Skyrim that her father passed away. She thinks she should be angry, or sad, or feel anything other than_ nothing, _but she doesn't. She does not go back for his burial, and she gives everything he left behind to Danica in the Temple of Kynareth. She does not even cry. But she forgives him. That is enough._

_Lydia is fifty-eight when she watches Gael walk Anise down the aisle in the beautiful old church in the lower city. The man she's marrying is good, and even Gael can't find a fault in him. And it's only half a year later when he hands off Sofie to a man, another wonderful one, and he jokes with Jon that he better not get married yet or the house will be too quiet._

_Lydia is sixty when she decides to fill the hole in her heart left by her children with something worthwhile. She spends her days with the soldiers of the Wayrest Guard, teaching them and talking with them and enjoying being needed again. She does not miss the blood and the screams and the terror of battle – they plague her dreams almost every night – but her wartime friends are far away and dying and she misses the feelings of brotherhood. She is asked many times to take the job of Post Captain, but she refuses. The Steward offers her many positions in politics and trade and she doesn't want any of them. Neither does Gael. They just want to live their lives. And they do._

"That was way too close," she breathed, wiping the blood and sweat from her face. 'You – you nearly died."

"Yeah." He panted, doubled over, and then glanced up to her, grinning.

She punched his arm.

"Ow! What was that for?"

She rolled her eyes before placing her hand on the back of his neck, resting her forehead against his in a sign of camaraderie.

"Seriously, though. Don't ever think of leaving me again, or I'll hurt more than just your arm."

"I won't," he whispered.

"Good."

And she believed him.

_Lydia is sixty-three when she reads the letter again. She doesn't even mean to find it – she told Gael long ago to hide it somewhere she can't get to – but she's searching the cellar for baby clothes to give to Anise and it falls from between some chests of her old war memoirs. And she cries just as much as the first time, though her heart hurts a little less. She remembers the snow and the cold and the dragons of her homeland, and she remembers her Thane. She likes to think he'd be proud of her for listening to what he said, for moving on and being happy. She likes to think, wherever he is, that he's watching her and guiding her and happy with the life she's led._

_Lydia is sixty-five and holding Jon's newborn daughter in her arms when Gael collapses to the floor. His heart attack was much too close a call, and she makes him eat better and exercise more and lose that old man gut he's growing, and he does – even though she still catches him sneaking a sweet roll every once in a while._

_Lydia is seventy when word comes from Skyrim of King Ulfric's death. She says farewell to her children and grandchildren, and her and Gael leave for the funeral in Solitude. She reconnects with many of her wartime friends and comrades, and she doesn't even have to say anything for Gael to know. They buy a house in Whiterun, Lydia's childhood home, and decide to enjoy their golden years there. The city has changed much since her days on the Guard, since the Second Great War. Every time she looks upon the Gildergreen she thinks of Bo. Every time she walks by the barracks she things of Einur. Every time she passes Breezehome she thinks of her Thane. The city is engraved with memory, but it doesn't hurt her any more._

"What do you think happens when we die?"

He looked up from the fire, from the sword he was sharpening.

"I don't know."

"Do you think Sovngarde exists?"

"Does it matter?"

"Does it _matter?_ Of course it does!"

"Why?"

"Because –" she stuttered, and really, she didn't have a good reason. "Because. What if it's not there? What if it's all a lie, a children's tale? What if there's _nothing?"_

"I like to think of it this way, Lydia: I was dead for millions of years before I was born and did not suffer in the slightest from it. I am not afraid of Death."

He thinks a moment, staring into the flames before him.

"I am not afraid of Death, but I am afraid of dying."

"Why?"

"Because dying involves leaving. I'm not really good at goodbyes."

_Lydia is seventy-four when she forgets what her Thane used to look like. She cries the entire day, and scours the Dragonsreach library for a picture, and the Bannered Mare for a painting, and she even goes down to the gates to stare up into the marble statue of the Dragonborn. They are all close, but none of them are exact. And she turns angry at this – for all their accuracy, none had ensnared the spirit of the Dragonborn. None can quite get his haughty smirk, or his stubborn glare, or that thing he did with his eyebrows when he was concentrating too hard. It saddens her that so many could love him and call him their hero and yet none had ever really known him. That no one, after her and her oldest of friends were gone, ever would. This exceptional man deserved so much better than a statue made of stone. But she resigned to the fact she, at least, had known and loved him. Maybe that was enough._

_Lydia is seventy-six when she finally has the courage to go back to Breezehome. It is dark in there and the grass is overgrown and the branches of the pine tree are growing through the wallboards, but the Jarl had not touched the Dragonborn's home and it is exactly the way she had left it fifty-two years ago. Gael goes with her, and she is glad. As she walks through the house she can nearly hear the songs he used to sing, and feel the fire crackling in the hearth, and smell the oil of the lamp that used to flicker its light across the floorboards. But it is quiet now, and the hearth is nothing but ashes, and it is so cold and dark that Lydia can see her breath. The place is a mess, still, and she can tell that mice and raccoons have been living here since then. She cries. Gael holds her hand and is silent. And after so many years, Lydia finally lets her Thane go._

_Lydia is seventy-seven and her and Gael are sitting on the porch of their home, looking out over the wild windswept plains of Whiterun and watching a herd of mammoths make their slow, steady journey across the grasses. "Where do you think they are going?" she asks him. "I'm not sure. Somewhere warm," he chuckles, and Lydia laughs – her husband has never really gotten used to the frigid Skyrim air. He looks over to her – his hair is grey, and his eyes are tired, and his skin is wrinkled from a lifetime of battle and smiles, but he is more handsome than she can ever remember. He takes her hand in his. "Do you think we had a good life, Lydia?" he asks her. She squeezes his hand. "The very best."_

_Lydia is seventy-nine when Anise visits from Wayrest with her husband. She has four children and her own grandchildren now – Lydia is a great-grandmother! – and she loves the untamed mountains and grasslands of Skyrim, so unlike the gentle hills of High Rock. Lydia says goodbye to her husband and takes her daughter out on the prairie to hunt for caribou. It is midday when they hear the sabre-tooth running through the grasses and it is too late by the time Anise kills the beast with her sword. Lydia is lying in the grass bleeding from a deep wound in her chest and staring into the eyes of her daughter that are the same shade as hers and then after a good, long life on this earth, Lydia dies._

* * *

And there he is.

He is standing near the back by a table overflowing with food and drink and plate, and his back is turned to her, but even this far away Lydia knows who he is.

The great doors of Shor's Hall shut behind her loudly, and all the eyes in the place turn to face her.

He turns around.

"Well. It's about damn time, Lydia," he smiles, and his smile is exactly the way she remembers it, the way she had dreamed of it, the way she had imagined he would smile when they met here again.

He makes his way through the crowd to her, and then he is there before her.

There are so many things she wants to say to him _– I have missed you so much – not a day went by where I did not think of you – I always wanted to tell you I loved you_ – but she has the sneaking suspicion that he already knows all these things.

 _"It's you,"_ she breathes.

"Yeah. It's me."

And because Lydia had known him better than anyone, she can tell there are things he wants to say to her – maybe _I am so sorry I left you behind like I did – I have been there with you every day of your life – I have always loved you too._ But he doesn't need to say them, because she already knows all these things.

"I knew we would meet again some day."

"As did I."

"You must have some stories to tell. I'd really love to hear them. You lived a great life, Lydia."

She smiles, and she takes his hand. "The very best."

Lydia is home.

* * *

**A/N: Alright, this is the last you'll hear of me. Honestly. I won't post another chapter in three years. Haha.**

**Thanks for reading! See you starside!**

**-Kiwi**


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